Friday, January 1, 2010

My inspiration for my photography: Daniel Chester French's iconic memorial to Abraham Lincoln. This grand monument has been the backdrop of D.C. Confidential for 800 posts. It seems only fitting that it should be the last photo on this blog.

Well, folks, let's face it: D.C. Confidential's time has come. I love this blog and I love the city it initially covered. I've featured a lot of what makes Washington, D.C., beautiful and worth visiting and I'm proud of many of the photos I've posted here.

This blog started out with two purposes: 1) to allow me to develop my photography skills and 2) to get out and discover Washington, D.C., as more than just a place where I was working. I think I've accomplished both goals.

In May 2009, I relocated to Whidbey Island, Washington, and was fully prepared to start a blog there, but I was only on the island three days before I left for a "temporary" job in Switzerland. That's where I am now and I've covered a bit of what I've seen in Europe. But this blog isn't the appropriate site for that, so I'm starting anew.

My thanks to everyone who has visited D.C. Confidential over the last two years or so. Your comments and support have meant a lot to me and I appreciate the time you each took to look at my photos and leave comments. My thanks also to Eric and all the folks who make up the Daily City Photo community. I've been privileged to meet and become friends with some of you and I look forward to continuing that trend!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

I give you the best and worst of road-tripping. I've had two of those this year. The first one was in March and involved driving a good stretch of I-90 in the north. The second is the one I ended on May 15 and involved driving through the U.S. South and then up through California and on into Oregon and Washington. Both were great! I highly recommend a good, hearty road trip.

Best Natural Wonder: It's a toss up between the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. Both are spectacular!Best Humanmade Wonder: The Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.Worst Natural Wonder: Is there such a thing?Worst Humanmade Wonder: The Houston Expressway. 16 lanes. Really? Is that necessary? Come on Texas, get green already!Best Breakfast: A toss up between The Eggshead Restaurant in Fort Bragg, CA, and Cafe Pasquales in Santa Fe, NM.Worst Breakfast: The diner off of the interstate in Georgia. Hands down horrible. Puke worthy. Wish I could remember the name to ward you all off, but alas.Best Hotel: Any of the Best Westerns we stayed in were good.Worst Hotel: The Motel 6 20 minutes north of San Antonio, TX.Best Accommodations with Friends: They were all good! Thanks Lisa, Cal and Ann, Senga and Joni, Virginia, Ivo and Barbara, Heidi and Joe, Gram Kincaid, Sid and Toz, and Cele.Worst Accommodations with Friends: None of the above.Best Roads: Is there such a thing?!Worst Roads: All of them.Funnest Backroad: Old Route 66. The Burma Shave ads alone made it a blast!Coolest Sight: Everything. The San Francisco Peaks at sunset, Carlsbad Caverns, the Badlands and Mount Rushmore, El Morro, the Lincoln Presidential Museum, the Nauvoo Temple. It was all cool!Most Disappointing Sight: All the traffic in Yosemite.Most Surprising Discovery: The beauty of Texas' Hill Country. Wasn't expecting that. And the use of styrofoam containers in the South. And Sedona, Arizona. That blew me absolutely out of the water!Least Surprising Discovery: New Orleans. I expected it to be a little sleazy and seedy. It more than lived up to that expectation, which was kind of disappointing in its own right.Cheapest Gas: Somewhere in Alabama, I think.Most Expensive Gas: Southern California, of course.State with the Stupidest Law: Oregon, where it's illegal to pump your own gas.Number of Tickets: 1 for doing 74 in a 60 mph zone on the last day of the trip in Washington State. There's a story all it's own, too.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Hiking the paths at the base of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park last Wednesday, my cell phone rang. On the other end, a contact of mine at a client I have at a multi-national, intergovernmental agency. Would I be interested, she asked, in coming to Geneva, Switzerland, ASAP for at least a month or more to be an on-site editor and writer for them?

Um. YES!

Problem, though. I was still nearly 1,000 miles from my final destination and my passport was expired. The result: we spent Monday in San Francisco having my passport expedited, then finished driving up to Langley, Washington. I arrived Friday night (May 15) and am trying to get some of my boxes unpacked while also trying to pack for a six week stay in Geneva.

I'm bummed not to be starting my Whidbey Island Confidential blog and I still have five or six posts to put up on my D.C. Confidential blog finishing up our road trip across America. On the other hand, I'M GOING TO GENEVA, SWITZERLAND! Yoda-lay-hee-hoo!

So, I'll be blogging from Geneva and photographing life in Switzerland, France (where I'll be living), and any other countries I happen to visit during my days off. Stay tuned...

Traveling the United States for the next few weeks. Come along and see what I see. I'll post updates to this entry as I travel and will include a photo at the top as a teaser for those of you coming to this blog from City Daily Photo.

Friday, May 15, 2009

As I'm now living in a new place, I'm pleased to present Whidbey Island Confidential. Be sure to check out my new digs and see what island life is like. Of course, I'll be leaving in a few days for Geneva, so there won't be a lot to see. I'll be posting photos from Geneva here. Be sure to visit and see what I'm seeing.

P.S. Yes, you've probably seen the above photo before. I won't have time to get out and take new pictures before I leave, so this is a rerun from last winter.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

The last day of the trip, we traveled up the Oregon Coast. We stayed in Florence with new friend and fellow blogger Cele. Check out her blog here. Cele was a lovely hostess and it was fun to meet her husband, Ducky, and their Bassett hound sidekick, Arlo. We also stopped in Otter Rock, where we met a friend of Maya's for lunch. She works at a charming little winery her family owns called The Flying Dutchman. This is also where you can meet the world's friendliest squirrel--a little guy they've named Jared after the spokesperson for Subway. You can see pictures of Jared in the Critter Cam slideshow below. (P.S. One note about the Critter Cam: some of the photos were actually taken in California, right before we crossed over into Washington. I didn't want to do a separate entry.)

The Critter Cam

We ended up staying in Long Beach, Washington, near the ocean. I didn't take any pictures there unfortunately and the next morning we left Long Beach and drove to Seattle. After I dropped Maya off at her place, I hit the road again for the final leg--34.5 miles and a ferry ride to Whidbey Island--where I arrived in Langley at my new abode at around 4:00 p.m. It was nice to finally sleep in my own bed and not drag my suitcase in and out of the car for the night!

Alas, the next three days featured unpacking boxes and getting things organized in my cottage, then packing a couple of suitcases for my new gig in Geneva, Switzerland. I enjoyed a couple of days of peace and quiet and then it was back to Seattle for Maya's birthday and a stay over until my flight on Wednesday afternoon.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Continuing northward, we stopped in the town of Trinidad, CA. Along the way, we saw some beautiful coastline. At one point, you have to turn inland because the coast road ends, but you end up driving through some beautiful redwood forests. We stopped briefly at Richardson Grove State Park, because I remembered camping there as a little kid, and took a few pictures of the giant redwoods. They're awesome!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

We stopped for the night in Fort Bragg, California. If you haven't traveled north of San Francisco, Mendocino and Fort Bragg are the places to go. The latter is especially down-to-earth and accessible to all kinds of people. (Mendocino is picturesque and lovely, but tends to be a little snootier than blue-collar Fort Bragg.) It use to be a logging town and Georgia-Pacific still has a presence there, but most of the town's commerce seems to be tourism.

Sea foam and kelp : Fort Bragg, CA(Click image to enlarge)

There are good places to eat and some fun shopping. The town also boasts a former garbage dump on the ocean (no, they no longer dump trash into the sea, but they once did) where you can find sea glass in abundance. We skipped that, but did enjoy good eats at the Egghead Restaurant. I highly recommend Dorothy's Revenge--Eggs Benedict with dungeness crab layered between the Canadian bacon and the poached eggs. Yummy.

Monday, May 11, 2009

I had to expedite my passport application today, which required staying in San Francisco to process and pick up the same at the passport agency. Between the time I dropped off said documents and picked them up, we had hoped to go to Alcatraz, but because of time constraints we ended up instead seeing some of my former work colleagues and having lunch with one of them. Then we hung out in Yerba Buena Gardens for an hour or so.

After finding out that passport wouldn't be ready until the next morning (bad news) but could be mailed to me (good news), we headed up the road and toward the coast. I love San Francisco and it was great to see Drew, Greg, Will, Jim, and Teresa and have burritos at Si Senor and cookies at Specialty's. Guaranteed I'll be making trips back down to the Bay Area to visit friends and family!